But they could bring the Golden State unprecedented power in Washington: Never before have both the Democratic and Republican House leaders hailed from the same state

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Republican Kevin McCarthy, left, and Democrat Nancy Pelosi are as ideologically divided as their two parties and their two cities. McCarthy’s Bakersfield is one of the most Republican cities in California, while Pelosi’s San Francisco is legendarily liberal. But both representatives could give California unprecedented power as they vie for their party’s leadership in the House.

People relax in Alamo Square Park in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, October 10, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

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Historic stores such as Kress and Woolworth are located in downtown Bakersfield, California, on Thursday, September 27, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Raffaele Saposhnik, 23, an economic consultant from San Francisco, speaks to the Bay Area News Group about San Francisco politics at Alamo Square Park in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, October 10, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Bill Hanson, 62, an engineer from Bakersfield, speaks to the Bay Area News Group about Bakersfield politics at the Kern County Fair in Bakersfield, California, on Wednesday, September 26, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

People walk through the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, October 10, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Fairgoers enjoy the Kern County Fair in Bakersfield, California, on Wednesday, September 26, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Robin Menard, 55, a physician's assistant from San Francisco, speaks to the Bay Area News Group about San Francisco politics at Alamo Square Park in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, October 10, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Laurie Weir, 64, of Bakersfield, speaks to the Bay Area News Group about Bakersfield politics at Dewar's Candy Shop in Bakersfield, California, on Wednesday, September 26, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

People walk in the Financial District in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, October 10, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Historic stores such as Woolworth are located in downtown Bakersfield, California, on Thursday, September 27, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Thayer Walker, 56, a video professional from San Francisco, speaks to the Bay Area News Group about San Francisco politics at Alamo Square Park in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, October 10, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Mike Penney, 72, a U.S. Navy veteran from Bakersfield, poses for a portrait at the Kern County Fair in Bakersfield, California, on Wednesday, September 26, 2018. Penney spoke to the Bay Area News Group about his view of Bakersfield politics. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

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They represent two vastly different Californias.

Nancy Pelosi’s covers 39 square miles of a legendarily liberal enclave. Kevin McCarthy’s is 9,898 square miles of farmland and suburban sprawl in one of the state’s most conservative strongholds.

After Tuesday’s election, the two Golden State politicians could give California unprecedented influence in Washington, D.C., as they vie to lead their respective parties in the House of Representatives. Never before have both the Democratic and Republican leaders in the chamber hailed from the same state.

But that’s where the common ground ends. Like America as a whole, deeply Democratic California features its own Red State-Blue State division. The two leaders — and their hometowns — perfectly embody the divide.

“Pelosi and McCarthy might be from the same state, but Bakersfield and Pacific Heights” — the tony hilltop neighborhood where Pelosi lives — “could be different planets,” said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman.

Ideological opposites

More than perhaps any other cities in California, San Francisco and Bakersfield find themselves unfairly caricatured: left-wing loonies on one side, conservative hokies on the other. While San Francisco likes to think of itself as the center of the universe — The City, with a capital T and C — Bakersfield knows what it’s like to be underestimated.

Pelosi and McCarthy are ideological opposites and products of their respective cities. Political observers doubt they’d forge much of a pro-California partnership if they took the top two jobs in the House.

And in a microcosm of the division in the country, people from their two cities feel like they’re barely part of the same state.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon at Dewar’s Candy Shop, an old-school Bakersfield ice cream parlor with pink swivel seats and a black-and-white checkerboard floor that first opened in 1909, patrons said they felt California was tilted too far towards San Francisco.

Unlike the Bay Area, “we’re out here working and getting oil all over us,” said Caleb Emerson, 44, a Bakersfield native who was enjoying a root beer float with his two young sons. “Those who got to work hard want to keep what’s theirs and not give it away” in taxes.

Down the bar, estate liquidator Laurie Weir bemoaned how the local agricultural and oil industries were stifled by regulations put in place by Bay Area politicians. “Maybe Nancy Pelosi needs to come be a farmer for two weeks and realize exactly how it all works,” she said.

But others said they thought McCarthy had shifted too far to the right, and wished for more middle ground in California politics. “It feels like, like a lot of the Republicans, he’s selling his soul to stay in the party,” said Amanda Swanson, a nurse who left the GOP out of disgust for Trump.

What’s in it for California?

Pelosi, 78, and McCarthy, 53, are both known as shrewd political tacticians. They’re also among the most prodigious fundraisers in American politics, raking in tens of millions of dollars for allies.

Despite that, tensions within each party could scuttle both Californians’ chances to hold the speaker’s gavel.

Among Democrats, dozens of moderate candidates and incumbents around the country have vowed not to support Pelosi, who has starred in GOP attack ads across America’s heartland since first being elected speaker in 2007.

Among Republicans, McCarthy has detractors on his party’s right flank who could block him from the top job as Paul Ryan leaves office — something that happened the last time McCarthy made a bid for Speaker in 2015. Whichever party loses control of the House could be especially likely to choose a fresh face.

Former aides say Pelosi and McCarthy don’t have a very close relationship — she’s dealt mostly with Republican Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan.

And on many of the most important issues to California, the two have worked against each other. She orchestrated the passage of the Affordable Care Act, while he fought to repeal it. She helped secure federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project, while he’s urged the executive branch to cancel the project. And she’s denounced Trump at every turn, while McCarthy has become one of his closest allies in Congress, recently introducing a bill that would fully fund construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall, the president’s signature issue.

In an interview Saturday in San Francisco, Pelosi said that she and McCarthy have “some big differences.”

“We do, as Californians, take responsibility for what we need to do for our state,” Pelosi said. “And to the extent that we can work together, we do, whether it’s the fires, the drought, the floods.”

But she said she didn’t know whether the Republican caucus would choose McCarthy as leader, and questioned his lack of advocacy for immigration reform.

“I know in his district there’s a great deal of interest from farmers and growers and farmworkers for comprehensive immigration reform,” she said. “But he has not prioritized that.”

McCarthy, whose staff did not respond to requests for an interview, has voiced scorn for Pelosi’s national unpopularity. “I kind of like Pelosi staying around,” he told reporters after the 2016 election. “As long as she’s there, I think we stay in the majority.”

Still, the fact that McCarthy hails from California could hurt him among his most conservative colleagues, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.

“There’s always been this ABC movement — anybody but California — in the House of Representatives,” Jeffe said. “If the Republican caucus was confronted with the possibility that California would own the two top leadership positions, that makes it harder for Kevin.”

Fairgoers enjoy the Kern County Fair in Bakersfield. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Living in SF’s ‘little bubble’

Of course, McCarthy’s hometown of Bakersfield is hardly the stereotypical image of California. His district is the second-most Republican in the state. It’s a town where local officials have objected to the sanctuary state law, where President Trump won a solid majority, and where the most popular radio stations play country music all day long.

In Bakersfield, “you can run campaigns against San Francisco,” said Matt Rexroad, a GOP strategist who’s worked for McCarthy and other Central Valley Republicans. One of the most damaging slurs against any candidate here is that they have “San Francisco values.”

On the other hand, Rexroad said, “I don’t think that many people in San Francisco can find Bakersfield on a map.”

That’s not such an exaggeration. In conversations last month, many San Franciscans said they knew little about Bakersfield other than it was conservative and relied on the agriculture industry, although they weren’t necessarily proud of that.

Robin Menard, a 55-year-old physician’s assistant, said living in San Francisco felt like being inside “a little bubble.”

“We are very progressive and we’re very forward thinking, but almost to the exclusion of other ideas,” she said. “I have to consciously sort of step outside that — the last election was really a great reflection of that.”

San Francisco is “almost like a fairy tale” — beautiful but out of reach for all but the wealthy, said Raffaele Saposhnik, a 23-year-old consultant. “Bakersfield is a lot much more like the [rest of the] U.S., like the places in the south and the Midwest.”

People walk through the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)

Paths to power

Not surprisingly, Pelosi and McCarthy followed different paths to electoral politics, although they both launched their careers thanks to the help of local political machines.

Pelosi grew up in a political family in Maryland, the daughter of a Baltimore mayor who served in Congress. “She was stuffing envelopes for her father as a kid,” said John Burton, a longtime Democratic leader in the Bay Area. “That’s where she learned her values, where she built her political skills.”

After moving to San Francisco, she served key roles behind the scenes, chairing the state Democratic Party and helping run the 1984 national party convention in the city. But she didn’t run for office until age 47, when she succeeded congresswoman Sala Burton, who endorsed Pelosi from her deathbed after battling cancer in 1987. Pelosi won a close special election for her seat, despite opponents accusing the Burton family machine of orchestrating a “coronation.”

“None of us had any inkling she was going to run for office,” said Art Torres, the former chair of the California Democratic Party and San Francisco politico. “But she’s an incredible campaigner.”

McCarthy’s family in Bakersfield usually voted Democratic, his father a union firefighter. He showed an entrepreneurial shine from a young age — investing $5,000 he won in the lottery to start a deli counter in his family’s frozen yogurt shop — before getting involved in politics as a local intern for longtime congressman Bill Thomas.

He criss-crossed the sprawling district representing Thomas, while also forging ties with other GOP rising stars as a leader in the Young Republican National Federation. He won his first election to the local community college board in 2000 and then to the state assembly, where he became minority leader and was known for dealing across the aisle with the far larger Democratic caucus. After Thomas retired in 2006, McCarthy moved up to Congress.

“He was always very personable and well-liked from both sides of the aisle,” said Dean Florez, a former Democratic state senator who would share a prop plane with McCarthy on the bumpy flight from Bakersfield to Sacramento. “He’s great at building relationships, and I think that’s a product of where he’s from.”

Many voters in both Bakersfield and San Francisco say they would like to see McCarthy and Pelosi bridge the political divide and tone down the partisan tensions plaguing Washington. At the Kern County Fair last month, Bakersfield engineer Bill Hanson shook his head over how polarized the state had grown as he snacked on tater tots smothered in brisket, onions, cheese sauce and sriracha.

“Politics has become something like a team you support,” he said, pointing to the Vikings jersey he was wearing. “They have their team in the Bay Area, and we have ours here… and it’s frustrating to watch.”

Casey Tolan covers national politics and the Trump administration for the Bay Area News Group. Previously, he was a reporter for the news website Fusion, where he covered criminal justice, immigration, and politics. His reporting has also been published in CNN, Slate, the Village Voice, the Texas Observer, the Daily Beast and other news outlets. Casey grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from Columbia University.

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